Current web pages utilize a variety of HTML tags for purposes of ad serving and tracking user behavior. An example of an HTML tag is the iFrame container which is used by many ad servers to place ads within web pages. Many other tags exist and each has a specific purpose (e.g., digital marketing, display remarking, web page analysis). While HTML tags are necessary for many of today's websites, especially e-commerce sites, the main disadvantage of such tags is that they have the potential to drastically slow page load times which frustrates end users and leads to higher web page abandonment rates and thus potentially lower revenue for web page publishers. Further, web page publishers must implement a specific service provider's HTML tags within the publisher page. As more and more tags are included within the web page, the overall time required to fully load the page is increased, sometimes to unacceptable levels.
Some web page publishers try to mitigate this problem by placing vendor tags at the end of the web page code so that the tags load after the web page content. However, this method is problematic because placing tags at the end of a web page reduces the number of users still on the page at the point of the tag request, which correspondingly limits the tag's ability to gather data that is often very valuable to the web page publisher.
Webmasters and information technology experts work to maximize the efficiency of loading the content of web pages but often have no control over the tags necessary on their web pages. This causes undesirable page load delays and sometimes results in the removal of some tags to mitigate the overall effect.
Vendor tags may also present other risks to web page publishers. For example, JavaScript tags load sequentially which causes the browser to block all other execution of the page while it awaits completion of the script. Thus, if the awaited script never completes, it creates the worst-case scenario wherein the page never finishes loading.
Other solutions allow for tags to be loaded after the browser has marked its document object model (DOM) as complete. This method may present problems in that if a script loaded in this manner attempts to write content to the page itself (which has already been marked complete), then the browser will create a new page, effectively overwriting the intended page with a new, blank page. Therefore, a need exists in the art for a system and method that is capable of managing how and when certain tags load within a web page.